Central Desktop Launches Collaboration Intelligence Engine

 Central Desktop, a leading cloud-based collaboration platform company, has launched the Collaboration Index (C-Index), an automated scoring system calculated by the Central Desktop platform that ranks users in relation to other system collaborators across four dimensions: audience, listening, social and facilitation. The resulting intelligence provides managers with a roadmap to discovering users with clout and leveraging their unique strengths to help forward business initiatives.

The four dimensions of collaboration measured by the C-Index include:

• Audience – Users with a high audience score have a healthy following and are seen as a good source of information, making them ideal for getting the word out about various initiatives, lending support and credibility to projects, rallying the troops and reinforcing team culture.

• Listening – These users show interest outside their focus areas and have an excellent holistic view of what’s going on in the organization. They can often uncover subject-matter experts and locate content.

• Social – Top social users are a bridge between collaborative groups, pulling people into conversations and creating a lot of involvement. These users can be helpful in trying to get people more involved in projects or initiatives.

• Facilitation – Users with high facilitator scores often spur a lot of collaboration after they start participating and help move projects along.

The new tool quantitatively assesses system interaction and applies it to collaboration behaviors and work styles. According to Arnulf Hsu, chief technology officer, “Many companies struggle with making meaningful information out of an overload of data. Data without analysis serves no purpose. Collaboration is much more than just activity. We synthesize the data to tell a story. We can tell you how many people listen when certain people speak, who has the most holistic view of what’s going on in your company, who can act as a bridge between groups and who makes progress easier. Those insights help companies make better business decisions, from assembling the right project teams to ensure the success of a marketing campaign to getting the right people involved in pushing through an initiative.”